Vol. 79/No. 24      July 13, 2015

“The great powers had photographs of the rail lines that took trains to the concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, to kill the Jews, and also Christians, also the Roma, also homosexuals, to kill them there,” he told the youth. “But tell me, why didn’t they bomb that? Interest!”

In 1941 the Nazis began implementing the “Final-Solution,” a plan to exterminate all Jews in Europe. In Poland 3 million Jews were murdered, 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population; in Greece, 87 percent; in Lithuania, 85 percent; Yugoslavia, 81 percent; Slovakia, 80 percent; Latvia, 78 percent; and the Netherlands, 71 percent. The Jewish population worldwide is still smaller than before World War II.

Auschwitz was the biggest of six concentration camps, all located in Poland, specifically designed for mass murder. Five railroad routes transported Jews, Roma, homosexuals, communists and others from all over Nazi-occupied Europe. In Auschwitz alone between 2.1 and 2.5 million people were killed.

Some Polish resistance fighters requested that the Allies bomb the railroad leading to Auschwitz. Instead, U.S. and British planes bombed factories near the camp, but never the rail lines.

Francis made his comment in response to questions about love and how to live a life “that doesn’t destroy, that isn’t a life of destruction … that doesn’t dispose of people” in today’s world.

“Sometimes I have said that we are living the Third World War, but in pieces,” he said. “There is war in Europe, there is war in Africa, there is war in the Middle East.”

The pope noted that there are “leaders, entrepreneurs who call themselves Christians, and produce arms!”

“Man and woman are not at the center of the global economic system,” he said, “but the god of money.” He called on the young people to “go against the current, namely, be courageous and creative.”

While Francis did not comment about the record of the Catholic Church hierarchy in collaborating with the Nazis during World War II, he has blocked attempts to elevate to sainthood Pope Pius XII, who led the church for most of the war.

The Vatican has never admitted to its collaboration with the Nazis, justifying its signing of a concordat with the Hitler regime in 1933 as an attempt to protect the Catholic Church in Germany.

At best the Church kept quiet in the face of the Holocaust. At times the hierarchy directly collaborated with the Nazis. Catholic priests across Germany supplied details of marriage and baptism registries to distinguish Jews from non-Jews in accordance with Nazi laws.

At the conclusion of a two-day visit to Israel in May last year, Francis made it clear that beatification of Pius XII is not going to happen. “There’s still no miracle,” he said at the time. “If there are no miracles, it can’t go forward. It’s blocked there.”

Pope Francis’ comments in Turin are in line with his continuing fight to restore the authority of the Catholic Church and bring it more in step with the changing social attitudes of millions. In an interview he gave to the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica in September 2013, he said that while the Church hasn’t changed its view on women’s right to abortion, contraception, homosexuality and divorce, “it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. … We have to find a new balance.”

In April the Vatican ended its witch-hunt against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main organization of U.S. nuns, who had been accused under Pope Benedict XVI of promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

The shift by Francis is good for working people, opening up more opportunities to discuss ways that workers, whatever their religious beliefs, can come together in a common struggle.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home